


Beyond the Beyond

by littleblackbow



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: M/M, Snupack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-14
Updated: 2012-09-14
Packaged: 2017-11-14 04:56:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/511551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleblackbow/pseuds/littleblackbow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a pure afterlife fic. Short, sweet, cute.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beyond the Beyond

Somehow, the nothingness didn’t feel quite as bad as he’d expected. Not that he expected anything at all. But generally, nothingness was not a good thing in his mind. Although how he knew that, he had no idea.

It was a strange place, this nothing-place where he was. He stood on one side of a shoreline, barefoot, wearing only a simple red robe. Down near the shoreline there grew some reeds and daisies, and he could see fish swimming mid-way between his shore and the next.

The next? There was a next shore. Another piece of nothing-land. Well, _that_ didn’t make any sense.

He sat down on a mossy rock by the shore and tried to think. Nothing came to him at first. His mind was blank other than the thought that a roasted fish might be nice, even though he wasn’t at all hungry.

And that wasn’t right, either.

Somewhere up in the nothing-sky, a bird called out to him. Now, this bird was familiar. He recognized it immediately and waved one arm “Fawkes!”

The phoenix swooped down and landed on the ground in front of him.

“There you are. I’m really glad to see you. See, I can’t seem to remember a thing about myself, and I don’t know what this place is or what I’m doing here, but I do know _you_. How about that?”

The bird hopped toward him and cocked its head to one side. He sat down in front of it and smiled, resting his chin on one hand. “It’s a pity you can’t speak. I’d really like to know...”

Fawkes reached under one wing and plucked out a feather, then set it down at his feet. He then plucked out one more feather, and finally a third. After setting all three feathers in a row, he tapped his beak on them one at a time.

As he sat there watching the bird, a plume of white magic came out of the first feather and reached out to him. “I don’t know what you’re doing, old boy, but... oh!” Memories started floating back into him. Into Sirius. Yes, that was his name. And somehow he needed to find the other two. “The other two who need these feathers.”

Fawkes hopped back and settled up on a rock. “These are for Remus and Severus. That is, when they get here.”

The bird cocked his head to the side again, then looked over at the other shore. Someone else was over there, sitting on a rock, wearing a white robe. Without another move, Fawkes flew up into the sky, leaving the two feathers on the ground, and made his way to the person on the other shore.

Sirius sat there for a few moments just looking at the feathers. The fact that Fawkes was there with him was a little odd, but not unimaginable. After all, Phoenix lived between the realms of life and death all their lives. That he might be able to travel between them at will wasn’t too far-fetched an idea. 

But this meant he was dead. Truly and undeniably dead. And yet, he was somewhere. “What is this? Some kind of purgatory?”

He went down to a rocky out-cropping by the waters and lay on his stomach. Reaching down, he swirled his hands in the cool waters. Beneath the surface, he could see the world. It was as if the lakebed was made of glass and it all looked down on what was happening in the world below. “Hmmm. I wonder if any bad people get to come here. And why am I wearing red? Certainly not because of any house colors or that sort of nonsense. I wonder if it’s because my favorite color is red. Then when Remus dies, he’ll be wearing blue. And Severus... oh, he’d probably wear black.” Sirius rolled onto his back and put his hands behind his head. “James is wearing dark blue. Lily is wearing pink.”

A light breeze blew through the air, blowing Sirius’s hair across his face. “I wonder how long I’ll have to wait. I hope they get to live some sort of a life before coming here.”

Time was squishy in this nothing-land. When Remus swam ashore, Sirius couldn’t tell if it had been an hour, a week, or a year. The three feathers were still right there where fawkes had left them. He hadn’t visited again, but somehow Sirius hadn’t expected it, either. He sometimes spent his time rolling around on the grass thinking, sometimes he would take off his robe and go for a swim in the lake (each time he did that, he wondered if anyone who was down on the world below was getting a nice look at his bum and bits as he swam), but he never really thought about time, or how long it had been since he’d had a visitor.

When Remus swam up onto the shore wearing nothing but a blue robe, Sirius hadn’t forgotten that he might be disoriented and not even know his own name. He was overjoyed to see him, though. “Remus! Remus you’re here!” He ran out into the water and helped his mate up.

“Where? Who?”

“Come over here by the feathers. It’ll help things. Really it will.”

As soon as he set Remus down by the feathers, he heard another splashing in the water as someone else came swimming in.

It was Severus wearing a pale yellow robe. “You stay here, gorgeous. I’m going to help our mate.” He smoothed back Remus’s hair and went out into the water to help Severus up onto shore.

“I do not understand, but...”

“Feather first! Feather! We all need the feathers. It’s... yes. Oh, you are just too much, aren’t you?” Sirius gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and pulled him down to where the last feather was laying on the sand.

Remus had stood and was smiling at Sirius. “Hello, trouble.”

Sirius smiled back at him. “Nope, not taking that from you right now.” He leaned over and gave Remus a quick kiss on the mouth, then went back to Severus. “First we get his memories back.”

“My memories... have returned, thank you.” Severus stood and brushed the sand off of his robes. “Now, where are we?”

Sirius shrugged. “Afterlife?”

“The afterlife is a sandy lakeshore?” Remus asked, looking out at their surroundings.

“I don’t know. There’s another shore, but no matter how hard I try, I just can’t swim over there. It keeps moving further and further back.” He wrapped an arm around each of his mate’s necks and laughed. “I’m so glad you two are here. I am just... I’m so sorry about everything that happened.”

“You were aware?” Severus asked cautiously.

“If you look through the lake you can see everything that’s going on. Well, everything that concerns you. It was as if I was watching anything that crossed my mind. Sometimes it followed Harry, sometimes it followed you two, but I could always _know_.”

Sirius let them go and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his robe. As he stood there smiling, just looking at the two of them, Fawkes called from high above. He circled over the trio, then landed on a nearby rock.

“Is that...?” Remus asked, pointing to the bird.

“Yup! Fawkes. Nice to see you again, old bird. Hey! I can even call you ‘old bird’ because you are an--”

“Please don’t finish that sentence, Black.” Severus pushed his hair out of his face. He meant to tie it into a ponytail using a spell, but it didn’t work.

“Oh, yes, sorry. No magic here.”

“That is not entirely correct.” The voice came from the direction of Fawkes. All three of them redirected their attention to the bird. “Magic is different here. It is not bound by spells and wands. It’s far more intuitive.”

“Now you’re able to speak. Why didn’t you before?” Sirius asked. He plopped himself down on the ground in front of Fawkes. “When you gave me the feathers. Or rather when you set them out for me.”

“You knew what to do.”

“Wait, you mean those feathers were from you?” Remus asked. He lowered himself to sit next to Sirius on the ground.

Severus positioned himself behind the two and knelt. “They were phoenix down.”

“Yes. Phoenix down gives a human his memories - his life back, if you will.”

“Makes sense,” Sirius said, leaning back on his elbows. “So, what now?”

“It has been decided that the three of you shall advance together.”

Severus moved around to the other side of Remus and sat. “What do you mean by ‘advance?’”

“Questions are unnecessary at this time. Sirius Black, I do apologize for keeping you here so long. That you have retained all of your faculties is a testament to your strength of character. The judges, however, decided that it would be best to advance you with these two mates. It is uncommon, but sometimes it is the best possible solution. Now, if you three would hold onto my tail, we can proceed.”

“Hold onto...” Sirius grabbed Remus’s wrist and stretched it out to the Fawkes’s tail. He then took the second feather in his own hand.

As soon as Severus touched the tail feather, all three were whisked away as if they apparated, and became aware again inside what appeared to be a very comfortable room.

“Now that you’re here, I will leave you to settle yourselves in. Any further questions will be answered as you think of them. I must return now.” Before any of them could say a word, Fawkes disappeared again in a flash of flames.

Remus looked around the room. “So, now what do we do?”

“Anything we like, I guess,” Sirius answered.

Severus looked around the room. There was a very large Muggle telly, a sofa that could easily fit the three of them, two extra comfortable chairs, a wall of filled bookcases, a staircase leading up to another level, and a corridor that seemed to lead down to a kitchen. “So, when one dies, he goes to a sandy shore of an island, and then is whisked away by a phoenix to... a two-story cottage to live with his closest loved ones.” He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his robes and went over to the bookcase to see what his reading options might be. “Wearing our favorite colors, at that.”

Sirius spun around to face him. “Wait just a moment. You said... closest loved ones?”

“Well, that is what we are, isn’t it?” Severus answered. Looking over his shoulder at Sirius, he smiled. “We’re each other’s closest loved ones.”

Sirius went directly up to him and kissed him fully on the lips. When he finished, he looked back at Remus who was watching them, smiling. “So, what do you want to do first?”

“Kiss you,” Remus told him. 

Sirius rolled his eyes and went over to his best friend and lover and kissed him. “Now what?”

“Now? I want to make sure everything is going to be alright.” Remus sighed. 

“Harry,” they said in unison.


End file.
